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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25086124">jagged memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelpetals/pseuds/pastelpetals'>pastelpetals</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Byleth’s mother is mentioned briefly, Canonical Character Death, Family Loss, Female My Unit | Byleth, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 04:33:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25086124</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastelpetals/pseuds/pastelpetals</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>grief is a tempest</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jeralt Reus Eisner &amp; My Unit | Byleth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>jagged memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Work.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>
    <span class="s2">Please.</span>
  </em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Work.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s2">
    <em>I beg of you.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Work.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>
    <span class="s2">Sothis.</span>
  </em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">There is no response where a spirited voice would usually quip or chide. Rather, the owner manifests beside her distraught charge and winds her arms around the young woman’s shoulders, burying her face into dark, damp locks.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Byleth,” she says quietly, and the mercenary distantly wonders if this was the first time she had heard herself addressed as such in nearly nine moons. At least, by someone other than her father. Her father, who had smiled at her so tenderly until his very last breath. Who had closed his eyes, resigned, yet somehow looking as if he was finally unburdened.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Byleth,” Sothis tries again, a slight tremble in her words. “I am sorry. Truly, I... If it were possible—”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Stop,” Byleth whispers, the encroaching storm nearly drowning her plea. By now, the body in her arms had cooled to match the temperature of the terrain, but she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. They looked, for all the world, like statues in a macabre display, erected to memorialize her failure. Words from Rhea’s sermons return to her, about death and thereafter. </span>
  <span class="s2">
    <em>As man is born of the earth, he, too, shall return from whence he came.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Perhaps that was why Jeralt would sometimes stop and bask in the sunlight, or tilt his head just so, as if there was a message only he was privy to in the whisper of leaves, the chirrup of birdsong. His face, always so worn and wary, would soften into an expression that seldom touched his eyes yet enkindle them all the same. Those moments did not come often, but often enough that she learned to never disturb him then.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It’s the little things that remind me of her,” he had explained once, over dinner and the raucous laughter of their company. “Your mother loved this world deeply for all the time she was given in it—“ He paused to ruffle her hair, eliciting a wince alongside a swat. “—and you’re the culmination of that, kid.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Byleth wonders if it will be the same for her as it had been for her father, if she will now find faces in clouds or hear singing in streams. It sounds more haunting to her than consoling, to have remnants of the dead damning her constantly. She doesn’t need to look towards the sky or the mountains when she can simply close her eyes and see her father’s dying visage, seared on the back of her eyelids — a brand.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s2">
    <em>She smiled the most when she was pregnant with you.</em>
  </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Byleth lowers her head, onto her father’s chest, and weeps. The rain falls upon them in sheets, cold and unseeing.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i originally wrote this piece as part of a larger fic i had planned, but after recently coming from a place of loss, i wanted to post this as a stand-alone. </p><p>thank you for reading.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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